一笔画龙

These videos on YouTube show an interesting approach to brushwork, in which the artist varies pressure on a large loaded brush to make a stylized dragon’s tail in a single stroke — albeit a slow one.

There are several videos, but they lack identification for the artist, and though the style and approach is similar, I’m uncertain how many artists are represented.

This dragon is multi-color, with a brush preloaded with more than one color (if you’re short on time, the tail stroke starts around 1:40).

The process may be clearer in this one, in which the painting is monochromatic (tail stroke at 3:40), and in this one, in which you can see the brush being loaded with multiple colors (at 3:20), of what looks to be gouache, or possibly thickly applied transparent watercolor.

Details are, of course, added in additional strokes; it’s the tail that is done with the single flourish.

While it may seem a bit of a trick technique — meant to please onlookers as much as be an efficient way to render the image — I think the process shows some interesting capabilities of brush loading and variations in the timing and motion within a single brush stroke.